Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Instead of working on The Holeys, I gave in to try out drawing girls head.

Is it because of procrastination, bored of my own ideas, new object of interest? Probably all of them.

I won't pretend to know what I'm doing. In fact, here is the funny thing about my 1st girl head drawing. The idea is to draw a female face looking directly at me. By the time when I finished the drawing, you can see that it became a young girl looking down (at something)! Should I laugh or cry? ;)

"Girl 1" pencil sketch

For the next girl, I drew the eyes much smaller and further apart from each other to see how she would look like. O.k. she looked quite odd but in an endearing way. I actually quite like her. (Gee, am I weird?)

"Girl 2" pencil sketch

There is still a long way to go before I could draw a whole girl and let alone of painting one. Nonetheless, I believe that my drawing skill is improving with each sketch & drawing that I made.

So my dear fellow creatives and blogger, what do you think of my drawings so far? All comment are welcomed.

Til then, stay warm (in my part of the world) or stay cool (in your parts of the world) ...

P.S. Apologize for the poor pix :( No other excuses than my very poor photo skill

I like that they have the potential to spin off into other art projects. Here are a few I'm thinking about:

1) A set (or a few sets) of hand-drawn Holey Calendar Card 2011, like this ...

"Rupert - Mr. January", micron pen on stock card

2) A set (or a few sets) of hand-drawn Holey Note Card

3) A story blog of The Holeys

4) Turn them into paintings

But with my current health condition and other art project, I wonder if I'm asking too much of myself? Also, I really need to spend more time on learning & practicing both drawing and painting skills. But ..... what is the best way to learn & practice other than working on a project? Any thoughts?

Anyway, my fellow bloggers and creative, I'd love to hear of your comments about The Holeys. Take care and have nice week ahead. :D

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

It's just the neck pain has come back and seems like no matter what I do or don't do, it just sits there and refuses to go away .... :(

And in order to pick myself up, I had given in to two of my whims. I got myself a Kobo and ta-dah ... acrylic paint. ;)

The "Keep Calm" Kobo and "Interactive" acrylic paint.

OK, a bit ofHybrid J trivia here: I love reading and have been an avid reader since the age of 2. (I used to flip through magazines sitting in my crib when my mum was out doing grocery shopping. Or at least that's what my mum told everyone.) And you would seldom see me without a book or carrying some sort of reading materials. When eBook came out quite sometime ago, I thought it was the most ridiculous idea in the world. I remembered I told my friends that they'll never catch me reading a book from a computer or any electronic devices.

But over the last few years, I began to see that no matter how often I buy book cases to store my forever growing book collections, there are always books lying around the house waiting to be sorted, read or put away. And since I started to draw and paint, buying art books become a must. And gee, those art books are gigantic! A few of them could easily take up an entire shelf. I'm sick and tired of doing this "storage catch up game" that I gave in to the idea of eBook.

As soon as the local Borders started selling Kobo about month ago, I bought one. Well ... there's also another reason I got myself this little gadget. The Kobo comes pre-loaded with 100 free ebooks of the English Classics. Now, how can anyone walk away from freebies! Plus when I look at the price of the average eBook - it is almost about 1/3 to 1/2 of the paperback / hardback version. By switching to eBook, I'm saving space and money. Plus I'm now carrying 100 books in my bag and could read it anytime, anywhere! I think I just became a convert of eBook. :D

(BTW, my Kobo is actually of black color. I bought a "Keep Calm" gelaskin for it. Check out the little history of "Keep Calm" by clicking this link. I also got a Union Jack gelaskin as well. And yes, you're right, I have a sweet spot of Englishness ...)

Now for the acrylic paint. Honestly, I have no idea why I bought it as I'm still learning to use ink. But I guess apart from using it as some kind of retail therapy, I must be under the influence of some of my favourite artists (see the Artist Link on my side bar). A lot of them are either using acrylic or oil for their paintings. From fellow blogger / creative, Lisa, I learn that it is easier to correct mistake from acrylic painting. Probably that's why I want to give it a try. The brand I bought (Atlier Interactive Acrylic Paint) is an Australian made re-wettable acrylic paint. It is a new kind of acrylic paint which allows longer drying time for painters to work with. I won't pretend to know what it means until I use it.

Anyway before I plunge in to use acrylic to paint, I decided to practice a little bit more of color mixing. So far I got my oranges, greens and a few browns. I'm having troubles of getting more than two shades of purple. Been scratching my head to understand why. Maybe I should just forget about it and use whatever premix purples the market could offer! ;)

As of my drawing projects:

- Continue to develop "The Holeys" and will post them as soon as I think they are ready.